


with the stars up above in your eyes

by blackkat



Series: Bleach Drabbles [5]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Devotion, F/F, First Kiss, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Youkai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 11:18:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16094612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: “Hello!” Nel says cheerfully, because this isn't a night for restraint. That’s left to formal trips, to retainers and heavy robes and the weight of her sword at her back. Left to duty, to honor, to the nights when she drives the beast-like yōkai back to the borders of her lands. “Isn't it a beautiful night?”“Very beautiful,” Harribel says, and her gaze doesn’t shift from Nel. Her eyes narrow faintly, something close to wary, and Nel laughs before she can help it.





	with the stars up above in your eyes

There's a woman in the water.

Nel pauses on the shore, watching the moonlight ripple across the river, and it’s heavy, full. Bright enough for her to see the shape halfway out, head and shoulders and braided locks of hair floating around her that are pale under the moon.

There's nothing overtly strange, no sense of malice in the air. Nel places a hand on Gamuza’s hilt, but the breeze carries nothing but the smell of the grass and the night breeze. The woman in the water is staring up at the moon, unmoving as the current washes past her, and it’s such a simple image but for an instant it feels impossible for Nel to breath. Feels like the world is vast, or perhaps very small, and she can't make any sense of it at all.

“Lady Nelliel?” Pesche asks, from further behind. He hesitates, wavering like he’s looking for a threat, and Nel turns and gives him a smile.

“It’s fine, Pesche,” she says. “Another yōkai, I think.” After all, no one else would swim there—the humans all avoid it. Too many strange things in the water, Nel has heard them say. She believes it; after all, she’s one of the strangest.

“Another?” Pesche sounds alarmed. “Lady Nelliel, should I get Dondochakka? Should I get your pearl—?”

“There's no threat,” Nel says, and believes it. She glances back, but—

The woman is gone, and the curve of the riverbank is empty under the moonlight.

 

 

She leaves her retainers on the mountain next time the moon is full, ventured into the human world alone. They don’t quite see her, not unless she wants them to; there are a few sideways glances from those with a little magic in their blood, or an ancestor from Nel's world, but Nel doesn’t pause to acknowledge them. The only one she would is Ichigo, and Karakura’s resident onmyōji is locked up in his room, studying for a test. Nel passed by his window at one point, waved, and he’d leaned out to yell at her not to make trouble, but this isn't the kind of night when she wants to linger in one place, even for a conversation with her favorite human.

The moon is low and heavy, periodically obscured as the clouds heralding a summer rainstorm drift across its face, and Nel can feel it in her blood, the storm-surge heat that rises like lightning from the earth. It makes her restless, eager, and she prowls the town as the lights go out one by one, keeping to the stark moon-shadows and watching the people hurry home to lock their doors. Karakura knows what happens on full moons, and while the town has plenty of protectors, there are some nights yōkai can't be denied their nature, even in the name of human safety.

The river calls Nel eventually, glass-bright and swollen with recent rains. The grass on the bank is deep gold that shades to green as it approaches the water, and Nel slides down the slope, rises, laughs. She twirls through the daisies growing there with her arms above her head, and the air is sweet and humid on her skin as she giggles, giddy with the feel of the night. Her feet come to a stop at the very edge of the water, and she rocks forward, contemplates for a moment diving in. The cool water would feel good, and there's no one to care about propriety. Not tonight.

When she glances up, still trying to decide, there are eyes on her.

It’s the woman from a month ago, floating in the center of the river. Under this brighter moon, Nel can make out the strong lines of her face, the sharp angle of her jaw, the muscles in her arms as she treads water. Her eyes are something pale, echoing the river, and she’s watching Nel with a sharpness that’s something far different from hostility.

Nel laughs, kicks off her sandals, drops her horned helmet onto the grass. She dives forward in an easy arch, and the impact of the water closing over her is cool, sweet. For a moment Nel skims the sandy bottom, dragging her fingertips through the silt, her long hair swept around her by the current. Then what drew her in calls her up, back to the surface, and she arrows up, surfaces with a breath, and smiles at the woman in the river.

 _I know you_ , something in her whispers, and it feels like opening a book she’s long since forgotten, only to realize she remembers every line.

“Hello!” she says cheerfully, because this isn't a night for restraint. That’s left to formal trips, to retainers and heavy robes and the weight of her sword at her back. Left to duty, to honor, to the nights when she drives the beast-like yōkai back to the borders of her lands. “Isn't it a beautiful night?”

“Very beautiful,” the woman says, and her gaze doesn’t shift from Nel. Her eyes narrow faintly, something close to wary, and Nel laughs before she can help it.

“There aren’t any threats tonight,” she says, because she drove Nnoitra back three days ago, and he needs more time than that to lick his wounds before he tries to invade again. Ichigo would have told her of any other threats he sensed, and Pesche hadn’t heard any whispers of danger coming towards them. “You don’t have to worry about anyone in this place.”

The woman hesitates, then smiles faintly. “You seem very sure,” she says, but she swims closer, closes the gap between them.

Nel grins at her, doesn’t say _I'm the dragon-lord of the mountain and this land is under my protection_. “I am,” she answers instead. The woman likely isn't worried; Nel can feel her strength even at this distance, an invisible cloak of power that dances over Nel's skin like static before a storm. “I'm Nel! You haven’t been here long, have you?”

Pale eyes flicker over her, and the woman reaches out, lifts a strand of blue-green hair out of the water to curl it around her fingers. It makes Nel's breath catch, just a little, and the woman smiles.

“No,” she says, low. “This is my second time in Karakura. Does this land bow to any king?”

Nel's smile thins, all vicious satisfaction. “Not since would-be King Aizen lost his throne,” she says, and if she never does another thing, if Ichigo never again needs her assistance in anything else, she’ll be content with her part in tearing Aizen off his seat.

The woman stills for a moment, eyes doing another sweep of Nel's face, and then she twists Nel's hair around her fingers again, drawing it tighter. There’s still give, still slack, but it’s a deliberate gesture. Testing, Nel thinks, but she doesn’t pull away.

“Aizen was a traitor, not a king,” the woman says, and takes one stroke closer. She’s Nel's height, and their faces are on a perfect level. She has beautiful eyes, Nel thinks, and there are faint marks on the graceful column of her throat, below and behind her ears. Like gills, and there are faint marks beneath her dark skin, a pattern like the markings of a shark. Nel wants to touch, but she holds herself back.

“An enemy,” she says, light, and she never fights with reason, always has a cause, but that doesn’t mean she can't remember the way her blade sank into Aizen’s chest with something like satisfaction.

The woman makes a low sound of agreement, watching Nel closely. She drifts forward a little more, until they’re almost touching, and then says, “They say a dragon and an onmyōji brought Aizen to his knees.”

“Others, too,” Nel says loyally, because Ichigo brought a dozen allies to that fight, and all of them played a part. She won't take that from them.

“You could have been the queen in Aizen’s stead,” the woman says, and her gaze is steady, intent, unwavering.

Nel laughs, startled into it. She shakes her head, dismissing that in an instant, and says, “I'm a knight, not a ruler. Power is only good for protecting what you love, and the place, this is what I love.” She raises a hand, takes in all of Karakura, the spirits in the mountains and the town, the humans who see more than they should, the onmyōji studying Shakespeare in his bedroom. “I wouldn’t leave it for something like power.”

The other woman rises, like she’s standing on solid ground, and the water carries her, holds her. She leans in, and the hand holding Nel's hair is suddenly just tight enough to urge her in, to bring her close. Nel goes, leans in, and the power under the stranger’s skin surges like an ocean at high tide.

“Would you serve a queen?” the woman asks, and her eyes are on Nel's, her power is sliding under Nel's skin, and it’s like the moment when Nel sheds her human form and rises towards the stars, a breathless leap as gravity ceases to matter. “Would you serve a queen who served you in return?”

There's a whirlpool of power, of burning golden light like a crown, and Nel can hardly breathe. She reaches out on instinct, catches the woman’s hands, and the water rises around them, palatial walls and the full moon above. Nel's knees hit the bottom of the river, left bare and dry as that water whirls past them, and she brings one slim brown hand to her lips, presses a kiss to callused knuckles and then drops her forehead to the same spot.

“Isonade,” she says, half in realization and half in wonder. “The ocean-queen.”

“Harribel,” the woman corrects, and she pulls Nel to her feet, slides one hand away to tangle it in the heavy strands of Nel's wet hair. “And you—the dragon from the mountain.”

The queen of the seas is spreading her reign, Nel thinks. Following the rivers in now that Aizen is no more, and it should alarm her, should make her reach for Gamuza the same way Nnoitra’s invasions do, but—

She’s heard of Harribel before. Has heard how she fights for her subjects, hates killing, loathes traitors. Harribel didn’t follow Aizen, shut up her borders and kept to her kingdom instead, protected her people. Nel came from the oceans once, a very long time ago, before she realized the mountains were her domain, and that Harribel united them, that she kept them safe—it makes something in Nel's chest loosen, ease.

A good queen, she thinks. Not a corrupted king, but someone who will do her duty instead of simply seeking power.

“I would serve you,” she says, and bows, feeling the weight of the gesture, the meaning behind it. Nel never swore herself to Barragan, and certainly never to Aizen. She’s been without a king since she came into her power, but—

Maybe she was waiting for a queen with eyes like Harribel's, she thinks, and smiles.

There's a breath, low and full of wonder, and then hands on her cheeks. Harribel urges her up, steps in, and she’s so close, so lovely that there’s nothing Nel can do but kiss her. Without pause, Harribel kisses back, mouth firm and intent and devouring. Nel arches into it, into the hand in her hair and the arm that curves around her back, drapes her own arms over Harribel's strong shoulders and moans, the sound soft and sweet in her throat.

Harribel's chest hitches, and suddenly the water is falling back around them, sweeping them up in the swirling current. Nel laughs in surprise, right against Harribel's lips, and Harribel kisses her again. It tastes like a summer evening, like a promise given and returned, and Nel pulls her in, the water cool and clear around them, deepens the kiss until her lungs are aching and her mouth is sweetly bruised.

They surface, drifting, and Harribel's body is hot against hers, soft and strong and beautiful as Nel wraps her arms a little tighter around her.

Harribel smiles at her, small but full of light, and says, “The night still has hours left.”

Nel turns her head, kisses the pulse-point of her wrist, and smiles back. “Let me show you everything wonderful in my lands,” she says. “There's so much. Karakura is an easy place to love.”

There's a breath of laughter, bare and sweet, and Harribel leans in. “I think I've found the most wonderful thing already,” she murmurs, and her kiss is like drowning, like flying, like an ocean tide, and Nel never, ever wants to come up for air.


End file.
